Life on the Moon
by And The Moment's Gone
Summary: It's the cost of getting out of here alive.
1. Chapter 1

Title: **Life on the Moon**  
Category: TV Shows » White Collar  
Author: GwenhwyfarRose  
Language: English, Rating: Rated: T  
Genre: Angst/General  
Published: 03-09-11  
Chapter: 1, Words: 940

Warnings/Spoilers: If you haven't seen through 2x11 (_Forging Bonds_) then stop reading now if you don't want to be spoiled. If you squint you can see spoilers through the Finale (_Under the Radar_).

Summary: It's the cost of getting out of here alive.

* * *

**Official** **Disclaimer**: All White Collar characters and plots belong to Jeff Eastin and USA Network. I do not hold stock either the man or the company. Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, and any other character featured are NOT mine. The title and summary comes from the David Cook song _Life on the Moon, _and I don't own that either.

* * *

Three o'clock in the morning was the time for sleep.

He could have sworn he had said it aloud as his cell phone rang for the fourth time. Then again, he could have sworn that the Bureau gave him voice-mail for moments such as this. After ensuring that his anklet was back in place and sending Neal home that day in the warehouse district, Peter spent the next two finishing up the paperwork on the Adler case, the destruction of the Nazi treasure and getting Alex's information off of Interpol. The general census of the office after they shut down the file was that they wouldn't even think of picking up another case until they all had a very nice, long weekend.

When she'd told the office that unless it was an emergency, she was unavailable, Peter had hoped to spend all four days of it in bed with his wife, who was currently reaching for his cell phone in order to get the offending object to stop ringing.

Wait, was that the house phone?

Elle didn't even try to say 'hello' before Peter could make out the clipped tones of none other than Diana apologizing for the time and demanding to speak to him. "I wasn't sleeping anyway," Elizabeth brushed off and turned, holding the cordless out to her husband. "Diana." She said needlessly.

"Burke." The phone wasn't even to his ear as Peter rolled onto his other side, shoving his feet into his slippers and pushing the covers off of his body. Just because he was being forced out of bed by the Bureau didn't mean his wife had to stay awake with him.

"You need to get dressed and meet me at Lennox Hill." From the sound of it, Diana was already moving; He could hear the steady hum of her car radio over the phone.

He didn't even have it in him to swear, heading to the closet for a pair of jeans. If he was being woken up this early, someone could forgive his lack of regulation suit. He kept spare slacks in his trunk anyway, if the need to change arose. "What the hell did Neal do this time?" Elizabeth was sitting up now, and Peter cursed his CI for whatever it was.

"It's not Neal." Diana heard him let out a breath, and frowned. While she understood that the situation between agent and CI was volatile now, she knew Peter would forgive her for calling him first. That was after she reminded herself that she really didn't want to admit why she was getting him out of bed. Things were just going to get a lot more complicated.

"If it's not Neal…" He let the sentence hang, hoping that Diana took the hint.

"Carlson called." There was a beat and then Diana backtracked. "NYPD narcotics unit made a bust in Manhattan a few hours ago; Luxury drug den off of Ninth. We were called in after the smoke cleared." She hoped that he understood that the 'we' she was referring to was the FBI not them in particular.

Peter kissed his wife gently, whispering that he would call her once he figured out what this was about and shoved his feet into his shoes. He'd tie them when he got to the hospital. None of what Diana was saying made any sense, and he vowed that the next time he had to be woken up at three in the morning, Jones better be on the other end of the line. Whatever it was that Diana didn't want to tell him was going to wind up pissing him off. "How'd we get the call?" He rushed, grabbing his keys off of the side table in the hall and shoving his wallet into the pocket of his jeans. For a second Peter thought of calling Neal, but it he wasn't involved, and Diana didn't mention needing him at the hospital than it was best to let him sleep. The last thing they needed was the tension, or Neal snarking his way through a witness statement.

Obviously Diana had thrown out whatever it was that she hadn't wanted to say, and in his mental conversation with Neal, Peter had missed it. "I'm sorry Diana," he started as he opened his car door and shoved the key in the ignition. "Could you repeat that?"

"They found girls in the basement; six of them. SVU rode in with them to the hospital." She listened to Peter swear, and didn't give him time to ask why White Collar was being called in for human trafficking. "Carlson's got a possible ID on one of the girls and he needs you to confirm."

He was halfway across the bridge, lights going but no siren, when her words caught up to him. "Wait, why me?"

"He **wanted** Neal." Diana swallowed the last chug of her coffee as she pulled herself out of her car. Nodding to the officer at the door and flashing her badge at the closest orderly. She didn't even have to say anything before Jones shouted her name from down the hall. "Agreed to let you take a look at her after I told him that we weren't letting Caffrey anywhere near the hospital until after the ID was definite." There was dead air as Peter tried to process why they would want a White Collar CI to identify a girl being held in a basement.

It hit him just as he turned the corner and he actually physically stopped the car at a green light. This time Diana didn't have to repeat herself.

"Carl swears its Kate Moreau."

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I'm just test running this. Let me know if I should continue.


	2. Chapter 2

_Title_: **Life on the Moon**  
_Category_: TV Shows » White Collar  
_Author_: GwenhwyfarRose  
_Language_: English, Rating: Rated: T  
_Genre_: Angst/General  
_Published_: 03-09-11, _Updated_ 06-17-2011  
_Chapter_: 2, Words: 1,908

_Warnings_/_Spoilers_: If you haven't seen through 2x11 (_Forging Bonds_) then stop reading now if you don't want to be spoiled. If you squint you can see spoilers through the Finale (_Under the Radar_).

_Summary_: It's the cost of getting out of here alive.

* * *

**Official** **Disclaimer**: All White Collar characters and plots belong to Jeff Eastin and USA Network. I do not hold stock either the man or the company. Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, and any other character featured are NOT mine. The title and summary comes from the David Cook song _Life on the Moon, _and I don't own that either.

* * *

_Kate is dead._

Peter swore time slowed as he threw his car into park outside Lennox Hill Hospital and shoved his badge in the face of a random orderly and demanded to be shown the direction Special Agent Carlson and the girls had been taken. He didn't even think to apologize for scaring the poor man, he could always do that later, he supposed. The directions he was given weren't too terribly complicated (left on the other side of the door, right at the end of the hall, left at the next intersection), but he still wished that either of his agents had had the foresight to meet him in the lobby. He could get to the bottom of this faster if he could talk and walk.

_Kate is dead._

No matter how many times he kept repeating it to himself; he couldn't help but be reminded that they never did find a body.

The headstone that Mozzie had paid for in Montifore – right next to her father, Neal had demanded it – was guard to an empty grave, not that that had discouraged Neal from sitting in front of it for hours on end after he had been released from prison that summer. He could count the number of times that an agent had called or emailed him because Neal's anklet had gone off in the middle of the night and Peter had driven out there, sighing to himself as he was forced to drag the drunken man back to June's.

But that didn't help him at the moment.

Because at this moment, he was trying to convince his brain that Kate Moreau was truly dead and Carlson was mistaken.

At last he met Diana and Jones outside of the last hallway available in the Emergency Care wing, the former holding what appeared to be the start of a case file and the latter with two cups of coffee. Peter silently prayed one of them was for him. "What do we got?" Jones held a paper cup out for him and Peter nodded appreciatively. He had certainly chosen his agents for a reason.

"The doctor's in with her now." Diana pointed to the room across from them and shook her head before Peter could ask if Carlson was in there with her. In truth, Diana hadn't wasted any time shooing Carl from the doorway after they had moved her from a stall in the Emergency Room. If he wasn't shouting questions at the poor girl he was barking orders at her and Jones, and even though they were already in a hospital, telling him to take a hike before Peter saw him was probably preferred to her shooting him. "They haven't let anyone see her since they had given her the room. I wasn't even allowed to peek."

Peter almost drained the coffee in one gulp. "Do they have a prelim?"

"Malnutrition, dehydration," Diana flipped the file open and thumbed through it briefly. They had found the drug den four hours ago, and she had been called after the girls had been, as Carlson had put it, 'cleaned up.' There were only a few guesses as to what that meant and somehow, Diana didn't think water and soap were involved. Some divisions of the FBI weren't as concerned with their victims as they were their evidence. Thankfully there were at least two SVU officers still roaming the halls. She knew that even with the FBI spearheading the investigation, the girls would be taken care of in the long run, which was probably the only thing the FBI would let NYPD do. "She's got some major bruising on her face and torso; the doctor that gave her the first exam said at least three broken ribs but they haven't gotten a chance to get her into x-ray. She was going off of touch. The girl refused an SAE, kept insisting that they weren't **allowed** to touch her."

"Whatever that means." Jones took a swig of his coffee and pulled his notebook out. "Reports gonna say that she didn't say a word until they got her onto the bus, and never more than three at a time." He double checked the page and then looked up at Peter. "She damn near had a heart attack when Carl identified himself as FBI."

It took a minute for Peter to catch up. "She?" he asked after a moment, wishing that all of this would somehow just get easier. Who was he kidding? His life hadn't been simple since 'James Bonds' had been dropped onto his desk almost nine years ago.

"We didn't want to call her…until." Diana trailed off as the door to the exam room opened and both the doctor and a nurse exited. "Dr. Winters?"

The woman stopped and Peter put himself in front of Diana. "Agent Peter Burke." He pulled out his badge and flashed it before trying not to yawn. Someone was going to have to get him more coffee soon. Jones had finished his cup as well, so he hoped it wouldn't be too much of a fight. "I'm here about Miss Doe?"

"Halden?" The doctor looked over the chart as Peter frowned. He knew she was making sure she had pronounced it right and asking if it was a first or last name at the same time, although how she got it was beyond him. As far as he knew, Kate had never borrowed any of Neal's aliases. Seventy-five fake ids between the two of them in the height of Neal's 'career,' and not one shared last name. "It's the only thing she said she could remember, and even then she didn't know if it was her own name; Poor girl."

He shook off the voice that kept telling him that he needed to call Neal, or at the very least June and get Neal to the hospital as soon as humanly possible even if he didn't want to tell his CI why. He bit back the order and looked at the doctor again. "What can you tell me about her condition?"

Dr. Winters shook her head. "Nothing new to add to the diagnosis, I'm afraid. She still refuses a rape kit, but I see none of the signs of sexual trauma apparent on the other girls. Whoever was holding her seemed to enjoy beating her though." The file was opened again and she seemed to be looking over a list of injuries. "Three broken ribs, a cracked radius that was never set so it could heal. We had to re-break the bone in order to get it splinted correctly. There are also burns along her back and shoulders." She closed the file again, handing it over to the nurse. "There's a sprained ankle to top it off, and bruising on her toes that I can honestly say I've never seen before."

"Can we see her?"

"She's conscious, but definitely not coherent." He was going to pull out the badge again if her answer was no, and both of them knew it. After a second, the doctor nodded. "A few minutes of questioning at most," she decided firmly. "And don't expect too much from her."

Peter nodded, leaning to the room as Jones continued questioning the doctor. There was no doubt that a copy of the intake file would be on his desk at the first opportunity. He placed his hand on the door, trying his hardest to just push it open. He waited a beat, almost tempted to tell the good doctor that no one was going to be questioning her tonight, he just wanted to see who she was, but stopped himself. There was no need for him to make her look any less than an ordinary Jane Doe until he knew more. It was bad enough that his mind was already trying to come up with everything that he would need to do to insure her safety if it turned out she was Kate. Adler may be dead, but that didn't mean that he didn't have a contingency plan if this girl, Kate, had been found.

He wished that there was a precedent for this. That somewhere in the manual there was a chapter on how to handle it if the dead love of your Criminal Informant's life suddenly appears as some sort of hostage in a luxury drug den. Peter forced the door open while trying to remember to breathe. He stepped into the room and allowed the door to glide shut, separating him from his two agents as whoever was on the bed shifted.

Peter had seen victims before. White Collar Crimes Division may have been his home, but that didn't mean that there was a shortage of scum on the street, or that they weren't in big business. He had held the hands of abuse targets and children as the FBI carted their father (or mother, White Collar Crimes weren't exclusive to the male gender either) away for getting caught in a Ponzi scheme or some sort of tax evasion. The difference came in the faces themselves.

He'd never known them personally. It had been a name on a file, a faceless woman cowering in the corner, not a woman that he had spent months tracking just so he could read her the riot act about the treatment of her boyfriend. There had never been surveillance photos of her laughing with the barista at the high priced coffee house down the street from the Met, or an ATM screen shot folded over too many times in too many ways to keep her face preserved.

It had never been the difference between exultation and desolation for the man that he had started to see as a friend.

It was at that moment, when Peter realized that he was trying his hardest not to focus on the girl's face.

Her eyes fluttered open. No, that wasn't right. Her left eye opened, her right blinked for a brief second before she apparently decided that with as swollen as it was, it was too painful to force to stay open for long. "I'm sorry." She whispered after a moment, not even looking at him. "Tell him I'm sorry."

Peter shook his head, trying to decide when in the last five years **this** had become his life. "Do you know what you're sorry for?" He asked carefully.

She seemed to consider it for a moment, before thought got too difficult. Her head shook, her dirty brown hair falling out of the surgical cap, into her eyes and she didn't even try to brush it away. She needed a bath, but Peter wasn't going to say anything until he could get Diana or another agent in here to do it for her. The fewer hospital staff that knew who this girl could be the better in his book.

"Do you know who you are?"

Her eye opened again and other than the startling shade of blue, he couldn't find another connection to Kate with the condition of her face. Then again, it hadn't been her that he was staring at in the surveillance photos all those years ago. A tear rolled out of the eye swollen shut and her head shook slightly. "Tell him I'm sorry." She repeated.

He lasted another three seconds in the room before Peter couldn't bear to look at her anymore.

He fled the room, and didn't even pretend to admit otherwise.

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